Texas Executed A Man With An IQ Of 67 After The Supreme Court Rejected An Appeal

This undated handout photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Robert Ladd. Ladd, who was executed Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015.
AP Photo/Texas Department of Criminal Justice
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas on Thursday executed Robert Ladd, 57, who was convicted of bludgeoning and choking a woman to death in her home in 1996 and then setting her body on fire.

Ladd was pronounced dead at the state's death chamber in Huntsville at 7:02 p.m. CST after receiving a lethal injection, a prisons spokesman said.

Ladd was the 520th person executed in Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the most of any state. Nearly 40 percent of all the executions in the United States in that time have taken place in Texas.

Lawyers for Ladd had petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution, saying he was intellectually disabled with an IQ of 67 and that executing him would be unconstitutional.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied the request.

Ladd was convicted of sexually assaulting Vicki Garner, beating her with a hammer and choking her to death. He then set her body on fire. She was found half naked with her legs and wrists bound by electric cords, state officials said.

Ladd stole several items from the residence and exchanged them for cocaine, the Texas Attorney General's Office said.

DNA evidence and a palm print found at the scene implicated Ladd in the crime, it said.

Ladd won a last-minute appeal of an execution planned for April 2003 to give the courts more time to examine records indicating he was mentally impaired.

Courts allowed the execution to be put on hold until 2013 when his petition for a stay was struck down by a U.S. district court.